If Victor ever shows up and gives me permission to go to Boston, I silently added, taking another big gulp of my pre-dinner glass of wine. I’d already tried asking Yaron if I could leave Rhode Island to visit my best friend. He was usually pretty easygoing with me, especially after I started cooking us dinner every night. But that request clamped him right on up.
“You’ll have to ask Victor about that,” he’d told me.
“Okay, how do I do that?” I’d asked, trying to keep the irritation out of my voice. It wasn’t Yaron’s fault he worked for a complete ass.
Yaron had just shrugged. “If he wants to be in touch, he’ll be in touch. Meanwhile, my instructions are to make sure you stay here until he says otherwise.”
So no, that conversation hadn’t made me feel great about myself. I was basically wiling the months away until Victor felt like paying me a visit. Hopefully, Lena could make do with phone calls until then.
“Ah, actually, I won’t be here this fall,” Lena answered. “I got into med school last minute.”
I paused in the middle of taking another sip of wine. “What? Where?”
Lena and I had applied to all the same programs our last year at Mount Holyoke, and as far as I knew, she hadn’t even made the wait-list at any of them.
“Kind of far away,” Lena admitted. “Out in California. Get this. My dad applied for me behind my back! It’s so crazy that I actually got in.”
I wanted to be happy for Lena, but…
“That’s really far away. What is Keane saying about you going to school all the way out in California?”
As it turned out, I had totally been right about something going down at spring break. Lena had hooked up with Keane, this college hockey player she used to know back in high school. It ended badly, but then he got drafted by the Boston Hawks and begged her to forgive him when they ran into each other at the place where she was interning that summer.
She’d forgiven him, alright. And from what I’d heard on our calls which I deliberately kept one-sided, it had been a total summer of love. I’d never heard Lena sound as happy as she had these last three months, dating her crazy hot hockey player.
The truth was, I’d been kind of jealous that she’d unexpectedly started living her best life. Her romance with Keane was going great, and she adored her internship at this therapy collective, called the Institute for Better Boys. She’d even started talking about letting go of her father’s med school dream and applying to a few grad programs to pursue a degree in child psychology.
So, I really didn’t understand why she was so hot to leave all that behind for med school in California.
“Oh, Keane…” Lena’s voice became a lot less cheery. “I broke up with him.”
“You broke up with him?” I repeated. “Why? He’s been so great to you. Plus, he’s, like, famous and insanely hot. Are you out of your mind?”
“No, just the opposite. I’m being practical. I mean, Keane and I don’t really make any sense. He’s this big deal hockey player, and I’m just me. I doubt we would have lasted much longer, even if I had stayed in Boston.”
Anger surged through me. “What? How can you say that?”
It was like Lena was writing a revisionist history about what had gone down this summer. Unlike her college boyfriend, Keane had treated her like gold. Even though he was a professional hockey player, he’d made her a top priority. Also…“You two were so happy. Do you think those kinds of relationships just happen all the time?”
“I hadn’t really thought about it one way or the other,” Lena answered, her voice careful like she was talking to one of the kids with mental health issues at her internship. “I mean, I’m only twenty-two. I shouldn’t be thinking about relationships right now. I should be thinking about my career. Like you.”
“No, not like me,” I insisted. But then I had to stop because how I was supposed to conclude that argument. With the truth that I wasn’t interning in New York on the cusp of medical school because I’d been revenge married to a Chinese gangster who thought I’d betrayed him?
Still, it made me so mad that she was just throwing her healthy relationship away. I ended up giving Lena an excuse to get off the phone just a few minutes later. And I couldn’t force any enthusiasm into my voice when I congratulated her on being accepted into med school before I hung up.
If I still had my freedom, I would’ve gone up there and talked her out of moving halfway across the country. But I didn’t. I couldn’t.
Which made me feel like a shit friend.
That was why I decided not to answer the next time she called.
What was the point? It wasn’t like I could be the best friend she deserved from inside this prison.
So September, the first whole month I’d gone without talking to my best friend in the four years since we met at first-year orientation, came and went.
In October, I couldn’t take just cooking and drinking all the time. Cooking really nice meals and drinking really nice wines, to be fair—I’d leveled way up from Mike’s Hard Lemonade and pizza delivery. But no matter how much fine wine and food I threw at my situation, I couldn’t escape the gut feeling that I should be doing something more with my life.
So I opened Craigslist and started applying for jobs. The pickings were slim thanks to the recession. But luckily, I didn’t really need the money. I found a part-time position at this daycare center in Lower South Providence that paid just enough to be cool with the government. They were also okay with me only having a semester of work-study hours at Mount Holyoke’s campus childcare center on my resume as proof that I could handle taking care of kids. So perfect match.
I also joined a gym and got to work exercising off all the chub I’d accumulated in college and during my summer of cooking.
By the spring, I’d lost nearly 40 pounds.
I still wasn’t a size negative zero like some of the girls I went to school with in Japan. But Mom was over the moon. She gave me all the compliments on my dramatic weight loss. She even offered to fly out to New York to go shopping with me for new clothes. “I’ll pay, and you can show me around your med school!”
After a lifetime of constant criticism, it felt amazing and new to finally have her complete approval. Too bad only the losing weight part wasn’t a lie.
With a guilty heart, I answered, “I wish I could, mom, but I can’t take any time off to shop. Med school is brutal.”
She was a lot easier than Lena to put off when prioritizing studies over visits. But she asked for my address and my new size. “If I see something cute, I’ll send it to you. One of the ladies at my church buys all her daughter’s clothes. She’s in med school over at UT, and she never has time to shop either. I want to do something like that to help you.”
Ugh. I could not have felt any guiltier as I answered, “Um, I’m still trying to go down a few sizes. I don’t want to give up on my real goal because I have cute clothes that fit.”
“Great idea!” Mom agreed. Her voice was impressed as if I’d come up with a possible solution to climate change. “Get down to your best size, and then I’ll send you new clothes, and we will start looking for a husband.”
We. I was not looking forward to dodging her matchmaking efforts. Luckily, Mom honestly believed I had another ten to twenty pounds to go before I was pretty enough to catch a man. So I’d probably be able to put those conversations off for a few more months.
I didn’t tell her guys were already starting to pay me more attention.
They looked at me differently when I walked down the street. One even flirted with me in the produce aisle and asked for my number as we picked out our tomatoes.
I turned him down, just like I’d averted my eyes when other men gave me that “how you doin’” nod. I had no idea how seriously Victor was taking those vows we’d made, but I highly doubted he’d be okay with me hooking up during my “punishment.”
Still, as I walked away from the guy who’d asked for my number, I wondered if
Victor would look at me differently when he saw this version of me.
Or if he would ever show up.
More months went by, and still no Victor.
By April, nearly a year after he dropped me off at this prison, I’d learned to stop expecting him. This must be my punishment. Ten sexless years, wasting away in Rhode Island instead of getting the medical degree my parents had been so excited about a year ago.
Whatever.
I had my workouts and my cooking hobby, and my job to keep me busy. I’d also started taking excellent care of myself with the help of YouTube hair and makeup tutorials. I bought a bike, and I almost felt free as I cycled everywhere with the wind in my face. Sometimes for hours.
And sure, that feeling that I should be doing something else, something more, hadn’t gone away. It nagged at me, especially at night. And, of course, it made me sad that I was basically lying to all my friends and family about where I was and what I was doing.
But that was what alcohol was for, and at least this ridiculous prison had a wine fridge that I could keep fully stocked with bottles. Usually, a glass or three was all it took to help me sleep when that restless feeling got too loud. Sometimes a whole bottle, which was why I’d quickly learned never to trade with any of the other daycare workers for a morning shift no matter how nice they asked.
But main point: I wouldn’t unravel like Victor probably thought I would when he left me in Rhode Island to rot.
I’d win this ten-year war. Until my sentence was up, I’d be living my best life ever.
Take that, Victor.
I was in the middle of ironing a stack of Perler bead boards for a bunch of eager five-year-olds when an electronic chime let me know that someone had just entered the Young Souls daycare center.
“It’s a dad!” Aniyah informed me in sign language from her position on the other side of the ironing board. She wasn’t deaf, but, like many of my Young Souls kids, she liked to use the “secret hand language,” even outside of our ASL lessons. “I don’t know who.”
I didn’t bother to look over my shoulder to try to confirm the guy’s identity.
Aniyah was our public announcement system disguised as a five-year-old. The kind of kid who liked to be the first to tell the other children when their parent was here, and it was time for them to go home. So if she didn’t know who this dad was, that meant that we’d need to check his ID.
Whoever it was, he was a little early. I’d just gotten started on fusing together the bead projects the kids had made on pattern boards. And from experience, I knew there was no way a kid would let their parent leave before they’d collected their cooled-off art project. Not without a mini-meltdown, at least. Hopefully this guy wasn’t in a rush.
“Ms. Marge, can you get that?” I called out to the other daycare assistant on duty.
“Got it, baby,” she answered back from somewhere behind me.
“Yay! Time to play Guess the Dad!” Aniyah said out loud to the rest of the group.
I laughed. This was a game the kids liked to play. Most of the time, moms handled pickup. But sometimes, dads we’d never seen before came in, and we’d had to ask them to present ID and make sure their name was on the approved pickup list.
So Aniyah and the other kids liked to play “guess the dad” whenever a male parent walked in that they didn’t recognize.
I set the iron down to sign and say, “Maybe he’s nobody’s dad. Maybe he just wants a brochure.”
I always spoke and signed to the kids when my hands were free. It was my way of immersing them in the language outside of formal lessons.
“No, he is Lara’s dad,” another kid named Benny signed, looking over the ironing board at the new arrival. Then he said out loud, “It’s gotta be.”
“Why do you say that?” I asked with signs. I scanned the pile of pegboards and pulled out the pegboard with Lara’s name written out in sharpie on top of a piece of masking tape.
“Because he’s Korean!” Aniyah answered for him out loud as I put a piece of wax paper over Lara’s bead project and started ironing.
“No, that ain’t Lara’s dad,” another kid named Ryan spoke and signed, his voice ringing with the authority of the future mansplainer. “Lara’s dad works with my dad at Price Rite. He shorter than my dad. And he don’t got tattoos.”
I was laughing at their sincere debate until they got to the word “tattoos.”
I stilled over the iron, the bony fingers of the past crawling up my spine.
And I jumped when Ms. Marge laid a hand on my shoulder.
“Oh, sorry, baby, I didn’t mean to scare you,” she said, with an apologetic chuckle. “There’s a very interesting-looking man here to see you. He doesn’t speak, I guess. But he gave me a note with the name Victor.”
My heart stopped beating.
And of course, the kids chose that moment to burst into, “Ooohhhh! Miss Dawn’s got a boyfriend! Miss Dawn’s got a boyfriend!”
Part II
The opposite of love
7
VICTOR
Dawn had girlfriends now. They showed up daily at their lunch table and often flirted with Byron, who they’d decided couldn’t really like boys, based on the way he flirted back. They always seemed to be buzzing around her locker when Victor visited her there between classes, sneaking curious looks at him and giggling behind their hands. Dawn assured Victor that she didn’t have “all these” friends before he showed up.
“I think you get them when you win a boyfriend,” she claimed, her tone dead serious. “Like some kind of bonus prize for finally doing something socially acceptable.”
But the friends he found gathered around her when he went to pick her up from her last class that Tuesday afternoon in January weren’t like the others. A few of them wore glasses. And though none of them were curvy like Dawn, they talked in the same overly enthusiastic way, with big hand gestures and lines delivered while laughing.
Victor hung back and watched them debate about the quality level of some anime he’d never heard of.
Eventually, one of the friends he’d never seen before asked her when she was coming back to the art club.
That was also when Dawn noticed Victor waiting at the end of the hallway for her.
“I have to go,” she told the other girls instead of answering. “See you tomorrow!”
She didn’t walk to him. She ran, not bothering to hide how happy she was to see him.
“Moshi! Moshi!” she said, even though that greeting was only meant to be used on the phone. “Why didn’t you come over and get me? I didn’t mean to keep you waiting.”
She wasn’t like anyone else from his world. She never played her cards close to the chest. Now that they were what she called “official,” she was 100% honest with him. And that made him want to be 100% honest back.
“I like watching you sometimes,” he signed. “It feels nice just to watch you. In my heart.”
A pretty blush rose to her face, giving her warm brown skin a slightly pink undertone.
“See, this is why it’s not even a choice between you and art club,” she said with an embarrassed-but-pleased smile.
A slight pang of guilt rose in his chest. “Do you miss art club?”
“Not as much as I would miss you on Tuesdays if I didn’t skip it,” she answered.
Dawn was rarely smooth like her brother. By her own admission, she always got A+’s in Being Awkward. But sometimes, she surprised him by saying the exact right thing.
He took her by the hand and led her back to his car. That was the first time, but not the last, that he kissed her in the backseat, unable to wait until they got back to his apartment.
Victor had forgotten how dangerous it was to watch her from afar.
He hadn’t been prepared for the sight of her signing and laughing with the little brown children…just as she used to sign and laugh with him. Another upsurge of unwanted memories rose inside of him. They made his chest feel bruised as if his cousin ha
d round-housed him again.
He still didn’t know why she had taken this particular low-paying job, located in a high crime neighborhood in Lower South Providence. But Dawn appeared to genuinely enjoy her engagement with the children. It made him wonder what kind of mother she would…
Do not go down that road. The voice of reason cut his curious thought off before it could reach completion. It’s bad enough that you’re here.
That voice was right. He’d never meant to have sex with Dawn. That hadn’t been in his plan, which could be summed up in three parts: 1. Lock her down with marriage, 2. Leave her to rot in Rhode Island, and 3. Get all the way over his prisoner before he was required to marry someone else.
But she’d thrown him off his plan when she challenged him. And now here he was, watching her from afar again, even though he knew it was dangerous.
He couldn’t hear what the other teacher was saying to her, but Dawn went completely still. Like an animal who’d figured out that her predator lurked nearby.
Meanwhile, the children she’d been laughing and signing with started sing-songing about her having a boyfriend.
She abruptly set down the iron and immediately rushed over to him. But unlike in Japan, her face hadn’t lit up at the sight of him. Just the opposite. Her expression was upset and wary as she approached. As if she was walking up to a monster.
“What are you doing here?” she signed when she reached him.
She didn’t speak out loud, most likely because she didn’t want questions from her co-workers. She signed carefully in front of her body, blocking the sight of her hands from the children. They watched her and Victor avidly in the background and appeared primed to burst into another made-up song.
“Where is your ring?” Victor signed back.
“I took it off,” she answered, her expression tight. “A few months ago, when I didn’t hear a word from you.”
Was she irritated by his long absence or his sudden reappearance? He couldn’t tell.
Victor: Her Ruthless Owner: The VICTOR Trilogy Book 2 [50 Loving States, Rhode Island] (Ruthless Triad) Page 4